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Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

schools.nyc.gov

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Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#231

Post by gerbal »

nvahalik wrote: post #214
gerbal wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I though slavery was having a job you couldn't quit and weren't paid for? Having no job and guaranteed income seems pretty far from being owned by another human.

To think that American southern slave trade (e.g. plantations) is the only real form of slavery is extremely myopic.

What's a non-myopic view of slavery?

If dependence on a government for basic necessities is slavery, isn't any form of dependence slavery? Are trust fund recipients slaves? Are workers who depend on an employer slaves? Are people in debt slaves to their creditors?

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#232

Post by numpad0 »

wobbly_bush wrote: post #146
tren-hard wrote: post #18

One of those things I wish could out last this virus. We'd be so much better off as a society if we could at least keep our people fed. The comments in here seem a little negative currently but this is great news. Think of all the people in NYC who didn't have access to clean and regular food before the virus.

After the lockdown is lifted, do you think the fast food chains will allow for this to continue? How much of this could potentially eat into their revenues?

Ad freebies usually create net positive impacts

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#233

Post by fart_ratty »

smooth_remmy wrote: post #51
nvahalik wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Without universal basic income, we are totally f@cked UBI isn't a savior. UBI still requires that people, you know, pay taxes. If 30-40% of people have no income and are completely dependent upon the government, then you have slavery 2.0 (3.0?) and you will end up creating a worse, classed society than you had before: the ones receiving vs. those who pay for what everyone else gets. Or the government just prints mo…

Taxing only the wealthiest americans could easily fund a UBI for everyone else. The middle class will not have to make any sacrifices

If we were somehow able to liquidate the net worth of every billionaire in the US without any losses it might just about cover UBI, $1000/month for every adult, for one year. How are you planning to fund it for every year after the first.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#234

Post by Cpoll »

Justsignedup wrote: post #218
asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think SNAP is supposed to always cover 100% of food expenses. If you're near the cutoff point for benefits, you get some allowance, but you're expected to cover some of the food cost from your income. You would of course use your SNAP benefits first, since they are not fungible, so it is not surprising that you would run out before the end of the month. This does not mean that such households are unable to af…

That's the point. It should. If we remove the fear of starvation (we can afford to feed everyone twice and barely put a dent in our military budget) a lot of people will have a HUGE improvement in their day-to-day happiness. This is one of those obvious huge moral positives we can do. The only "down side" is there will never be fear of starvation. Edit: The one progress I can see in a society is when we can basically…

> If we remove the fear of starvation (we can afford to feed everyone twice and barely put a dent in our military budget)

327,000,000 people * 365 days * $5/person/day = $596,775,000,000 yearly Or $596 billion

$693 billion is the Wikipedia number for DoD budget, so that actually checks out.

Of course, that's more than "put a dent in the budget," but I'm sure you meant those in need, and not every American (which is the calculation I did).

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#235

Post by pmoriarty »

Melting_Harps wrote: post #107
vsareto wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Feeding people will always be a matter of profit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-dairy-...

> Feeding people will always be a matter of profit: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-dairy-... . I agree, sadly; I have actually been focused on mitigating the losses inherit in the Supply Chain itself, as on a solely Calorie basis we could easily feed the entire population, and is for the most part already at a post-scarcity level despite all the turmoil with Factory Farming and especially State…

"milk can’t be frozen, like meat, or stuck in a silo, like grain"

...but it can be dried. I bought some powdered milk during my preparation and have been using it to cook with, for which it's been great. In a pinch you can drink it, or use it to extend fresh milk, if you have any. It can be stored for a long time, too.

I know it's not ideal, but it's better than throwing milk away.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#236

Post by sbuttgereit »

Zenst wrote: post #75
blisterpeanuts wrote: post #27

The logistics behind this must be formidable. They would need hundreds of food preparers, all of them tested daily for COVID-19 and of course practicing strict hygiene in prep and packaging. Still it's probably easier to control than thousands of separate restaurants and food markets, which is undoubtedly their thinking: centralize food distribution to minimize risky contact. This is a sobering reminder of how depend…

Many things have become " just-in-time", production, so much that depends upon things ticking along and any bump like this, sure does start toppeling many a dominio.

I think over the coming weeks, we're going to see just how much of the "essential" part of the economy depends on the "non-essential" part.

For example, a comment in one of these postings on HN was talking about how the manufacture of essential supplies was continuing and robust (even I've made a similar comment some time ago). But... ok... how much of the logistics capacity, the capacity of hauling those essential products from the factory to the final buyer is being impacted? And it's not just trailer cubic feet availability that's at issue... it's are those containers available in the right place at the right time? Greater cubic feet available for essential products in fewer overall containers is still a potential major problem. I have to think that a fair portion of the common carriers are dependent on a mix of "essential" and "non-essential" goods for their business and that some of these common carriers are marginal even during the "good times". Fewer trucks/trains/drivers/etc, mean that getting a truck scheduled to a loading dock on a timely basis is harder, even if available cubic feet for essential goods has risen. If my speculation holds, manufacture of essential goods will be robust, but there will still be shortages at the stores and for buyers simply because shutting down the non-essential has reduced available containers and the bottleneck has shifted to inventory logistics. I can repeat this sort of thing for many different parts of the economy; I went to get a replacement part for a computer keyboard... the company's website said they were closed under county order as a non-essential business.... yet food producers still need to use their computers to ensure they can monitor available shelf-life, etc.

When we see broad pronouncements from politicians and bureaucrats talking about not shutting down essential businesses, I wonder if they appreciate how interconnected the modern economy is and that it doesn't simply break down into "essential" and "non-essential". Perhaps this sort of thing is why I so distrust those that would embrace economic central planning.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#237

Post by maxerickson »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #174
alexgodin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average SNAP recipient receives about $4 a day and sees their balance run out after just 17 days. This is not enough.

SNAP is not intended to cover the cost of a recipient's entire food needs. The S stands for "supplemental". You can argue that is should cover a recipient's entire food needs but it seems a little misguided to criticize the program for failing to meet an objective it doesn't have. Furthermore, federal programs have to be careful not to do things outside their mandate less they run into territory where they don't have…

They didn't criticize the program, they responded to a post that stated a fact about SNAP and made an apparently associated representation It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed.

Saying SNAP isn't enough is pretty clearly a response to the representation.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#238

Post by bobwaycott »

asdfasgasdgasdg wrote: post #181
alexgodin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average SNAP recipient receives about $4 a day and sees their balance run out after just 17 days. This is not enough.

I don't think SNAP is supposed to always cover 100% of food expenses. If you're near the cutoff point for benefits, you get some allowance, but you're expected to cover some of the food cost from your income. You would of course use your SNAP benefits first, since they are not fungible, so it is not surprising that you would run out before the end of the month. This does not mean that such households are unable to af…

> ... $500/mo in benefits for a family of three. This is definitely sufficient to provide three nutritious meals per day for three people anywhere in the country.

This is an unbelievable assertion.

That’s $5.48 per meal for 3 people. Have you tried to feed 3 people a consistently nutritious meal on $5.48 per meal everywhere in the country? What is your nutritious meal plan for 3 meals each day, 365 days per year, that doesn’t exceed $500 everywhere in the country? What are the ages and average caloric needs of each of the 3 people in this hypothetical family? How do you maintain $500/mo when, presumably, at least 1 member of the family’s caloric needs will change over time.

I’d love to see the meal plan that works for 2 adults and 1 child for $500/mo, for 18 years, everywhere in the country.

How do you handle snacks with $500/mo—do you just tell people tough luck, you only get to eat at specific mealtime? How do you compensate for the increased caloric need of a child who regularly engages in sports and physical activity—do you just tell them to stay hungry, or tell them they can’t engage in such activities?

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#239

Post by guerrilla »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #174
alexgodin wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The average SNAP recipient receives about $4 a day and sees their balance run out after just 17 days. This is not enough.

SNAP is not intended to cover the cost of a recipient's entire food needs. The S stands for "supplemental". You can argue that is should cover a recipient's entire food needs but it seems a little misguided to criticize the program for failing to meet an objective it doesn't have. Furthermore, federal programs have to be careful not to do things outside their mandate less they run into territory where they don't have…

Clearly, the criticism is not of meeting an objective it doesn't have but of not having the correct objective.

Re: Three free meals available daily for any New Yorker

#240

Post by munk-a »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #114
jsonne wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of 2018 40 million Americans received more than 57 billion dollars in SNAP. It seems like largely the US has been and will continue to keep people fed. Note also that this is just 1 Federal program and doesn't mention the multitude of other state level and city level programs that exist as well as private charities, religious organizations, etc. Please note I am not saying the system is perfect, shouldn't be expan…

Didn't the federal gov't just cut SNAP benefits? The maximum a single person can receive is 6$/day, the average a single person receives is $4/day.

Yes - the cuts went into effect two days ago on the first.
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